This Weekend’s Unanswered Questions (111205)

Another installment in a nearly-regular series of mysteries and pseudo-mysteries (usually 3-4) this inquiring mind would like to have answers for (some links included may require free registration):

QUESTION 1: How overdue is this?

Finally, not everyone going through airport lines will be equally suspect as a terrorist:

Starting in June, some fliers can skip long security lines

A program that speeds pre-screened travelers through security will begin June 20, launching what airports hope will be a new era of checkpoint screening.

Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley announced the start date Thursday at a congressional hearing. The Registered Traveler program will allow people who have passed a background check to go through checkpoints quicker. Participants must pay a fee, go through a records check for criminal warrants, and provide a fingerprint and eye scan. They’ll be checked against databases of known terrorists.

Airports will decide how much they’ll charge. In Orlando International Airport’s test program, Registered Travelers pay $80 a year.

Once in the program, travelers are entitled to use potentially much shorter lines at participating airports. More than 50 airports — including almost every major one in the USA — are interested in using Registered Traveler.

The wonder is that this got past Transportation Secretary Norm (no profiling) Mineta. And what an outrageous waste of resources that all passengers not in the Registered Traveler program will be just as vulnerable to full-body search as a young Arab “student” who bought a one-way ticket.

QUESTION 2: How do people who are so wrong in their predictions keep their jobs?

The Free Market Project notes previously warnings that the weak dollar was going to sink the economy:

The media weren’t just wrong about the future direction of the dollar and the end to foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury paper. They also missed the mark on their forecasts of an economic downturn. In fact, not only did the dollar’s value fail to “[put] the brakes on the country’s economic recovery,” but, instead, the gross domestic product grew by 3.8 percent in the first quarter, 3.3 percent in the second quarter, and 3.8 percent in the third quarter.

Curiously, even after the dollar had clearly bottomed, the media continued to focus on its “weakness,” as well as espouse new reasons why its value had ominous portent for the nation. Mellody Hobson of ABC News said this on “Good Morning America” on February 23 of this year:

“Well, it affects them in a couple of ways. One, we saw oil go up yesterday. It’s now over $51 a barrel, almost $2 at the pump around the country. More in certain areas. So, that’s a very specific effect that comes right out of your pocket because oil trades in dollars. So, when the dollar gets weak, the oil producers raise the price to make up for the difference.”

It was fairly common of the media earlier in the year to blame rising oil prices on a declining dollar. However, as the dollar has increased by roughly 15 percent this year, while oil has increased by about 40 percent, it was obviously specious to suggest such an inverse relationship existed between the two.

Americans could learn a key lesson from the media’s poor prediction skills that many professional investors have known for decades: When the mainstream press begin to recognize a trend in anything and focus a tremendous amount of attention on it, that trend is probably very close to being over.

I would only add the belief that, because of who is in The White House, it was an exercise in wishful, hopeful thinking for many members of the business press.

QUESTION 3: Does anyone remember McDonald’s doing this?

Maybe they have, but I don’t recall them ever announcing it:

Wendy’s to close up to 60 hamburger outlets; mulling Tim Hortons closings

Wendy’s International Inc. plans to close 40 to 60 Wendy’s outlets and could close some of its Tim Hortons locations in the U.S., including some of the former Bess Eaton restaurants acquired in 2004.

“These (Tim Hortons) units have produced lower-than-anticipated sales in their first year of operation, which has negatively affected profitability in the U.S.,” the company stated in a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission.

….. The company said it will close between 40 and 60 underperforming Wendy’s stores that are negatively impacting its bottom line.

The problems with the other brands are understandable, and typical. McDonald’s has had the same difficulties. But the flagship-brand store closings strike me as a bit more ominous than the company is letting on.

QUESTION 4: How many people know this?

From the Ottawa Sun (HT Outside the Beltway): “103 of the names on the Vietnam Memorial are Canadian.” Even so:

There’ll be words spoken in the cold November air about our brave soldiers who fought and died in World War I and World War II and the Korean War, but there’ll be no words spoken about the long and terrible and bloody conflict known as the Vietnam War.

How sad.